A Day With Friends Is a Special Day

How I start every journal entry of late: "The weather..."

In looking to plan a birthday adventure, THE WEATHER made any certainty a week out difficult.  So I tried what NYC is supposed to be great at, quickly and easily assembling a mass of talented individuals in a range of obscure and expensive hobbies - in my case cycling - specifically of the road variety as of late.  A few social media messages promising hills ending at beers later and BAM, everyone came out, one way or another, crossing paths on yellow lines and sidewalks.  It was great, though it almost didn't come together thanks to a variety of pitfalls.

"Life is absolutely beautiful if one will disassociate oneself from noise and talk and live it according to one’s inner light.

Don’t fool yourself more than you can help. Do what you want – do what you want knowingly.

Anger is a curtain that people pull down over life so that they only see through it dimly – missing all the savor, the instincts – the delight – they feel safe only when they can down someone."

- Richard Sachs, quoting Ms. Rogers.

Immediately upon crossing the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, I inadvertently lead the group away from a friend fixing a flat. 20-minutes later, another friend riding mid-pack ran into a recently fallen rock in the road that sent him sprawling.  Those ahead of the fall, including myself, kept going for a minute unaware, stopping only because Erwin broke his chain.  While pushing a pin into the bent chain link of Erwin's bike we got word of the crash behind and I could only fear that the other half of my friends were in a bloody heap of mangled plastic around the last corner.  Miraculously, the only guy to go down was the one who hit the rock, damage was minor, and the ride reconvened when we got Erwin's chain back together.

Then Erwin's chain broke (again). With this latest misfortune some turned back as Corey and Brian Friedo rolled by but Erwin hopped an Uber up the road to Piermont for a new chain in time to meet us for a now late breakfast in Nyack.  At which point the Vandivorts and Rog stumbled upon our merry but delayed bunch.

Having checked off about every sort of human and bicycle fform of mechanical known to man, and a few known to women as well, and being sufficiently re-caffeinated, we headed up for the second leg - summiting Bear Mountain's Perkins Memorial Drive and ending at Peekskill Brewery. The plan was executed gloriously from this point forward.  Those still with us made it up Perkins Memorial Drive for the cold yet obligatory top of Bear Mountain picture.

Clay, Erwin, Steve, and myself had an absolute blast descending down to Peekskill on the Garneau D1 bikes that the team has been riding in recent months pending the arrival of our recently ordered Dream Factory creations. 

But the highlight of the day was surely the pitchers of local craft ales served up by Peekskill Brewery.  It may have been several hours later than expected but the train home was happy and gay, and everyone got home from Manhattan despite a number of dubious light set-ups.

We had a beer. It was good.